Office programs flash open and then clos

I have Office 2000 on a windows 2000 machine. When setting up outlook under a persons new profile, as soon as the office assistant is hidden, the program disappears. It is not open, and if I try to open it again, I will see just a flash of the program. This then happens in all other office apps also. I couldn’t find anything on it at this site or microsoft’s. Has anybody ran into this before?